Posts Tagged ‘privacy’

In the midst of confusion over the NSA's spying powers, even members of Congress who voted for the applicable laws claim surprise at how they are playing out in practice. With defenders of spying saying to “read the statute” to understand its privacy protections, I thought I'd do just that. Say I'm the NSA and I want to legally justify a court order giving me access ... Full story

Today’s Slaw post: Much has been written about the NSA / Prism communications monitoring scandal over the last few days, including Simon’s recent post. Many things are unclear, and there are more questions than answers, but these things are clear … Continue reading → Full story

Considering the scale of the problem it comes as no surprise that dozens of organizations across the web have come out against the U.S. Government's PRISM spying program this week. One of the latest additions is the team behind the Vuze torrent client. Condemning "stunning abuses and violations of our basic Constitutional rights" the team say that they fully support encryption tools such as VPNs ... Full story

One of the notable claims we have heard, in light of the Verizon / PRISM revelations, is that data extraction measures are calibrated to make sure that 51% or more of affected individuals are non-U.S. persons. As a U.S. person, I don’t find this at all reassuring. To see why, let’s think about the underlying Full story

Former US prosecutor Larry Klayman and the parents of the killed Navy Seal Team VI member Michael Strange have filed a lawsuit against President Obama, the NSA and several other players connected to the PRISM scandal. Through the class action lawsuit they demand compensation for severe privacy abuses as well as violations of several other constitutional rights.Source: Former U.S. Prosecutor Sues Obama and NSA ... Full story

Yesterday’s revelations about widespread government data collection led me to re-read my nine-post series on “Twenty-First Century Eavesdropping” from back in 2006. I was surprised to see how closely that discussion fit the current facts. Links to the 2006 posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 Full story

Today’s Slaw post: Two basic privacy principles are that no more personal info should be collected than necessary, and it should not be kept any longer than necessary.  That flies in the face of repeated attempts by governments and law … Continue reading → Full story

This week a new "anonymous" BitTorrent client was released to the public. TrafficPrivacy allows users to hide their IP-address directly from within their client, at the price of a standard proxy or VPN service. The TrafficPrivacy team says its main goal is to provide an all-in-one anonymity solution for a less tech savvy audience.Source: TrafficPrivacy Launches Anonymous BitTorrent Client Full story

Today’s Slaw post This ars technica article points out that Microsoft scans Skype message contents for signs of fraud, which means that Microsoft can read them.  While Skype messages may be encrypted to prevent third parties from reading them, that … Continue reading → Full story

A case in the Massachusetts Court of Appeals, Ajemian v. Yahoo!, Inc., decided on May 7, is the latest case dealing with ownership of digital assets after death. Plaintiffs, Marianne Ajemian and Robert Ajemian, are co-administrators of their brother John Gerald Ajemian's estate. In 2002, Robert opened a Yahoo! account for John. Robert was a co-user of the account, but ... Full story